Iga Swiatek is maximizing her rest time and called on her peers to be shrewd in their own schedules as the tennis calendar continues to stretch out.
With myriad cases of players retiring in the last two weeks, less than a week before the US Open, a lot of people are questioning whether the workload this year is burdening the players. In addition, delays and rain interruptions have significantly impacted daily schedules in tournaments in Canada and now in Cincinnati.
WTA No. 1 Swiatek believes the tennis calendar is already compact, and expanding tournament draws and format means players will have less time to recover between tournaments. Earlier this week, Swiatek delved into her own fitness routine, explaining how sometimes she skips practice during tournaments in order to stay fresh for matches.
Swiatek put tennis governing bodies on blast saying they are 'taking it easy' on players and are more business-centric. In that case, Swiatek advised her fellow pros to stay grounded and take decisions regarding their own rest time and tournament plans into their own hands. That means players should learn when to take rest, likening the tennis calendar to a race.
"I think it's harder and harder. Tournaments, if they are longer, we have less time in between tournaments to recover. I think it's going to be pretty extreme next year if all the 1000 tournaments are going to be almost two weeks. So I don't think it's a coincidence. I think it's a sign for WTA and ATP to kind of take it easy on us. On the other side, there's a business that they need to take care of."
"Our season is actually going to get longer. I guess we are the ones that should be kind of responsible and know when to take a break and not really push because it's a race and it's a pretty long one. We have to be smart and your team has to be smart to make the right decisions."
Speaking to the media following her straight-sets win over Marketa Vondrousova, Swiatek was not at all surprised to witness many cases of players calling it quits. She pointed out the difficulty of playing the US summer hard-court swing with pretty no rest time in between.
"I'm not surprised because, yeah, this swing is hard, especially with the delays and the weather that messed up the schedule in Montreal. It's hard to recover from playing two matches a day. I know that after Warsaw. It was a 250, so the pressure was a little bit different than a 1000. Yeah, I understand that. I don't think it's a coincidence."
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